Fresh Perspective – iPad Mini Keynote

Hey! My name is Julia Grill also known as juliastic on Twitter and my nice cousin-in-law offered me to post an article about the lastest Apple keynote on his website. So I hope you don’t judge my English as much, because I come from Austria and I’m still learning it.

I also have a website called julialerntios.com where I review apps and also want to begin to blog about technical stuff. Right now all the articles are in German, but I’m trying my best to only blog in English anymore.

So, enough from the self-advertisement:

Yesterday, as you probably know, was the Apple keynote. That was generally the first keynote I ever saw, so I was a bit of excited.

But also I were generally excited, because of the iPad mini and the Mac Book Pro 13” who will be announced, how they will look and what they can do.

After the event finally started, my first thoughts were “Is this an advertisement event?”, because in the first 10 minutes they only say you how great the new iPhone and iPod touch are and how many units were already sold.

Advertising Event?

They also talked a bit about iOS 6 and Mountain Lion, which was kind of boring, because they already announced it, so they don’t have to talk about it again, at least for my opinion. But at some point I can understand them, because normally you are proud at the great things you create and want to show it, so the advertisement wasn’t really as bad as I first thought.

Also these advertisements are quite normal for these events, so I really can’t complain and at the end these informations were quite interesting, so I really can’t complain.

After that they announced the new iBooks version, in which you know can scroll continuously and the best thing, you have know iCloud sync. But one thing started to bother me a bit : They used way to many adjectives and that seemed to me a bit of distending. But maybe I only noticed it, because I never saw such a event before and I’m pretty sure that that’s quite normal in such events, so I really can’t complain.

New Macs

Then we finally had a “real new” announcement, the MacBook Pro 13” with Retina Display. It wasn’t really as special, because everybody already knew that there will be one, but everybody still was excited. I personally also was, but not as much, because that Mac is only a smaller version from the 15” one, so it isn’t really special. Also I’m more a MacBook Air fangirl and I would never change my MacBook Air 13” to a MacBook Pro with Retina display, because it’s so handy and light, but that’s a personal decision of what you like more.

But to get back to the topic, I also wasn’t really surprised of the technical infos, because, as I said before, it’s only a smaller 15” MacBook Pro, so it has nearly the exact same technical data.

The price didn’t shock me- Ok,1699$ aren’t less money but compared to the 15” version, which costs nearly 2000$, it’s a fair price. AND these two Macs are the only ones in the entire market with a retina display and when you combine all these factors, I would say that that price is (almost) fair, even when it’s a lot of money.

The next thing they announced was the new MacMini. And Phil Schiller started the presentation with “You knew that something is going to be called Mini in that presentation, didn’t you?”. I really laughed at that one, never thought that I could laugh at these events.

But the new MacMini isn’t really as special, it’s just slightly upgraded to the older MacMini (e.g. USB 3, faster).

Then came the iMac and it literally blew my mind. It’s 80%(!) thinner and it also has 75% less reflection. Because of the thinness it looks so much more modern than the last generation. I already were quite impressed by the last iMac, but the last iMac can’t compete with the new one. It literally makes the older iMac look much more older than it really is. Apple did really an amazing job there, really have to say that.

A absolutely new and great thing in the new iMac is the “fusion drive”. It combines the “flash” and the “HDD drive” to one. Because of that you don’t have to buy both and choose manually between them, it’s build in automatically and you don’t need to activate it. I have really to admit there that that’s an awesome idea. For people who have really much files, etc. on their Mac need it’s an really awesome option and as I also said before, an awesome idea.

Shocker: iPad 4

Then they finally announced the new 4th generation iPad. I personally wasn’t all excited about it, because two generations of iPads in one year are a bit too much for normal Apple buying people, at least for my opinion. After that Tim Cook talks a bit about the reason of the success of the iPad and it’s sometimes even funny. He also talks a bit about iAuthor, which features the new update has etc., but, to be honest, this isn’t quite interesting for me.

After that the real iPad announcement finally starts. It’s of course nothing revolutionary, but it’s e.g. twice as fast as the iPad 3 or the HD FaceTime camera and it has also LTE but I didn’t expect anything else from the iPad 4, really nothing special there, except that it’s faster. But Apple doesn’t show how it really looks like, they didn’t compare it with the iPad 3, maybe they look the same, but they really could have done that for my opinion.

iPad Mini Android Bashing Fun

And then there was the moment we’ve been all waiting for-the announcement of the iPad mini. At the first look, it reminds me a bit of the iPhone 5-not in a bad way. But also on the 2nd look its design still looks a bit iPhone 5 oriented, which is of course not a bad thing. It’s 23% thinner, it’s also nearly half as light than the “normal” iPad and it has a 7.9” diagonal. It also has a FaceTime HD camera, a dual-core A5 chip and a twice as fast Wi-Fi so it’s ok, but not enormously great.

The only negative aspect of the iPad mini is that it has not a retina display. Of course, when it would have retina it would be much more expensive. Maybe it would be better to have at least an option to have an iPad mini with retina even when it’s more expensive.

But then it gets really funny. They compare the iPad mini with the most sold Android tablet device, that could be only fun. Phil Schiller points out that the iPad mini is better in every single point, which isn’t even lied, it’s e.g. bigger, lighter and it also has a better design or a way bigger web browser sight. He also says that Android tablet applications are not made for a tablet, which I experimented by myself, these applications are really horrible and look terrible, I would really advise you to never buy an Android tablet, but I’m going of topic again.

After another advertisement video they finally tell the starting price of the new iPad mini which is 329$. I didn’t expect it to be so “expensive”, because I read that it may starts about 200$, but I didn’t really think that it would cost really as less. I personally thought that it maybe would cost about 250$, so that Apple could also compete with the other “cheap” tablets and they would gain much more tablet buyers because of that.

After another ad Tim Cook resumés the year 2012 for Apple and then it’s over. I really have to say that this keynote was really interesting and exciting, it just showed the viewer once again how leading Apple is in their segment and we all hope that the also will be it in the future.

Conclusion

So that was how I saw my first live seen Apple keynote. It was a really quite impressive one with many cool announcements and in which Apple showed us once again why they are the best.